INVESTIGATIONS are being carried out into four incidents in which patients died while under the care of the NHS, Bournemouth and Poole Primary Care Trust's board was told.

One case involved a patient who collapsed and died while receiving foot treatment in a hospital outpatient clinic. An initial investigation by Poole Hospital found he had suffered an unexpected heart attack.

Another case involved a patient who was wrongly diagnosed with dementia. A failure in communication led to her not receiving hospital treatment for a clinical condition, which worsened and led to her death.

The meeting heard that the patient's GP practice was seeking information from the hospital to try and identify the cause of the communication problem.

The other two incidents were suicides, both of which were being investigated internally by the GP practices concerned. The board heard that in one case, a number of gaps in care had been identified.

The cases were highlighted as the most severe of 234 adverse incidents in the last three months of 2006.

Among incidents classed as "moderate", unclear communication with a diabetic patient led him to believe he had been discharged. He injured himself cutting his nails, and had to have part of a big toe amputated.

Two people in a rest home developed "significant" pressure ulcers and nine other patients had tissue damage from pressure ulcers.

In another case classed as potentially moderately severe, a mother threw her baby on to the floor in front of a health visitor, prompting a child protection review.

During the quarter, the trust received 18 written complaints about its own services and 14 written complaints about family health services. It also had 29 compliments and letters of thanks.

A spokeswoman for Bournemouth and Poole PCT said: "The government recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of incident reporting . We are encouraging reporting, but GPs don't have to report to us. There are hundreds of thousands of treatments going on every day. Sometimes things go wrong."